May 11, 2005
The summer has officially begun. Yesterday we got the engine recall fixed and now the batteries are in the boat. We're in the sailboat, having just rounded Cabo Trafalgar and are now coming up on Tarifa, the southern most point of Europe.
Cabo Trafalgar or Cape Trafalgar is where Lord Nelson of the British Navy fought the combined French and Spanish fleet back in the early 1800's. It was one mighty battle that was watched from Shore. Basically outnumbered, Nelson brazenly split his fleet into three pieces and attacked the French/Spanish fleet at 90 degrees from the battle line in three spots. This the the first time this was ever attempted. At the end of the battle, some 20 French/Spanish ships were sunk or captured without a single loss to Nelson's fleet. Unfortunately, Nelson lost his own life to a French sharpshooter towards the end of the battle.
At this point we are 8 nautical miles from Africa and can see the Atlas Mountains in the mist. We expect to be in Gibraltar in about 3 to 4 hours. The "iron horse" has powdered us down the coast as there hasn't been much wind. We got up early and left Puerto Sherry at 0700, which would give us the best tide solutions. However, it's been a battle to get the SOG (speed over ground) to be higher than the boat knots. When SOG exceeds the knots, then we are being pushed by the tide flowing back in. We have about 2 more hours before high tide, and we haven't seen the "free lunch" yet. We track our GPS position every half hour as well as the rpm's on the engine, oil and water temperature. We're making about 6 knots of speed, which gives you plenty of time to check out the scenery.
Viewing Africa in the distance is a bit of a momentous moment for us. Even though we visited Morocco last year, it is still gives a bit of a thrill to see it in the distance. We've been heading South for the past two years and will now be turning the corner heading East into the Mediterranean for the next few years. Africa is the harbinger of this change in direction.
In this area there are many "tunny nets". If you are not aware of them and come through in the night, it could really mess up your boat's propeller - and you would have lots of irate fisherman after you as well. Before we left Cadiz, we keyed into our navigation system the coordinates of the various "tunny nets." Even so, we were surprised coming down the coast that we were inside one of the nets by 1/2 mile which forced a small detour. We're also going by many windmill farms along the Spanish coast. They are very prevalent in Europe and you see large clusters of windmills along the coast.
Tonight at 7pm is our radio get together with our boating buddies, so now that we are going to be in Gibraltar, we're anxious to see what ports they are now in.
We called the guy in Gibraltar yesterday to see if our stuff that we sent from Seattle had arrived. He said it did and asked if "we had a crane to load it into our ship." We said no we didn't have a crane. We then asked if he had a hand truck to help us move it down the dock. Should be an interesting day tomorrow. We need to use our boat stamp to help pass the goods through customs for "boat in transit" clearance.
When we knew were were going to send a pallet of things to Gibraltar (besides boat parts, sewing machine and solar panel), we decided to take a quick trip to Costco and buy canned goods for the summer. Now we need tomake up a map to show where all the food will be stored in the boat so we can find it later.